'God bless garden hoses'

CENTRAL FLORIDA INFERNO

PALM BAY -- Whatever Janice Edwards gets her son for Christmas this year, it won't be enough.

Armed with just a standard garden hose -- and a timely wind shift -- Mark Waters saved his mom's house. A small corner of the garage is scorched, and a porcelain garden angel didn't make it, but otherwise the place is fine.

Waters, knowing his mom was out of town, had headed to the house on San Soving Street to see what he could do. He grabbed the hose and began watering the lot line as the fire moved a few streets over.

Suddenly, it turned and came toward the house, feeding off the empty lot next door.

"It was like a fire tornado," he said. "It was awful."

Then, he said, everything went black. Smoke made it impossible to see and almost impossible to breathe. Waters wondered whether he had made a horrible mistake.

"I thought, 'Oh, [expletive]. Now what?' "

But just as quickly, the wind shifted -- and the fire moved away. Somewhere, his mother called, "Mark, my house is on fire!"

"No, it's not," he said, "I got the garden hose."

Waters, a former junior firefighter, said he was happy to help his mom. But he's in no hurry for a repeat performance.

"I never want to see something like that again."

Flames burn years' worth of her memories

The fire was just four houses away when Patti Wagner grabbed her three cats and 13 birds and drove away.

Tuesday morning, her two-story home on Ocean Avenue was a one-story pile of smoldering rubble and concrete blocks. The two sheds that once stood in the backyard were incinerated. Two cars were burned. Her boat was a melted chunk of fiberglass.

Wagner choked up when she remembered she didn't grab photographs. "All of my pictures are gone. And 24 years," she said.

She didn't remember clothes either. "It's just stuff," the 55-year-old engineering technician said. "I guess the only thing you can do is get rid of it and start new."

Fire's speed stuns resident

Valda Gayle is still struggling for words.

She just can't believe fire moves like that.

"I watched the fire come right across the street," she said. "Right across the street. It was amazing."

And scary.

Gayle was hoping to stay in her south Palm Bay house, but the situation turned chaotic too quickly. As she and her husband headed out in their car Monday evening, the flames were jumping from lot to lot.

It was only when they returned five hours later that they realized how lucky they had been.

The fire had burned up to the lot line on both the side and the back of the house. It had consumed their carefully tended garden of pumpkins, sugar cane and corn. But it spared the house.

"That's too close," she said, walking along the edge of the yard. "Much too close."

Gayle was angry that the owner of the empty lot next to her had done little cutting. Still, all she lost, she said, was a garden and some sleep.

"I couldn't sleep last night," she said. "Don't know if I will tonight."

Scorching heat melted tools, car windows

Hal Benington was sifting through the garage Tuesday when the flames kicked up again.

They leapt from the end of a charred wooden beam, searching for oxygen and something to burn. Benington grabbed the only thing he could find: a half-empty bottle of Zephyrhills water.

"It'll do," he said, dousing the fire. "I think we're going to see a lot more of that."

Benington had come with his sister and niece to inspect the ashes of his parents' place, a three-bedroom log home on Corey Road in Valkaria. His parents were in Wyoming, so the trio drove over to see what could be salvaged. The initial assessment: not much.

The heat was so intense that metal tools appeared welded together. A neighbor's car windows had melted, dripped and rehardened like wax from a candle.

"These are supposed to have a lifetime guarantee," Benington joked, holding up a pair of pliers. "You telling me you can't throw them in a fire?"

His niece managed a little better.

At her grandmother's request, Bobbi Randolph had been digging through the smoky rubble looking for the home's house numbers. She had found three of four.

The home had been where her extended family gathered for Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter dinners, she said. She didn't ask why her grandmother wanted the cracked and blackened house numbers, but she has a pretty good idea.